A Window Into the Early Years of Peabody 

The first performances of a young academy of music were dutifully recorded in a bound volume that now lives in the Peabody Institute Archives. With exacting penmanship, the book, Peabody Institute Academy of Music Concert Programmes, documents student recitals, orchestral soirees, and exhibitions concerts that established Peabody as the “sounding board of American musical expression.” New compositions by Peabody composer Asger Hamerick are mixed into the significant amounts of Beethoven and Wagner. The book also serves as an early box office notating the tickets distributed and collected at the door, and records the concert scheduled for November 4, 1869, was postponed “In consequence of the death of George Peabody.”